svetya

As suggested by its title, ‘The Trial of Ubu’ takes Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi as a main character. Drawing on the plot about Ubu’s tyranny and innumerable crimes, it goes on to imagine what would happen if such a character was given a real dimension and taken to court for his actions. The play questions the efficiency and ethics of the International Criminal Tribunal in Hague, its stiffness, slowness, and dubious claim for objectivity. In her staging, director Katie Mitchell adds a layer of performance which scrutinises our conventional understanding of stage reenactment and poses a question on the notion of theatricality itself.

The opening scene is nothing less than a frantic punch-and-judy sequence, which fast forwards through the story of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 play ‘Ubu Roi’. The audience is faced with mass murders, rapes, and tyranny; the pace of which makes up for a heightened grotesqueness, and a response from the audience, which is comic and unnerving at the same time. Suddenly the tiny square screen in which all this happens is shut – snap, like a guillotine – and another, human-size one, opens. The transition between the scenes is captivating. Lizzie Clachan’s minimalistic design frames the different spaces and invites the audience to observe. The puppets are replaced by actors who perform the same routine over and over again with such precision and detail, as if they’re mechanical and not real people. Kate Duchene and Niki Amuka-Bird are acting as interpreters for the ‘real-life’ trial of Ubu, who in 2009, long after his alleged crimes in the imaginary kingdom of Baleshnik, is tried at the International Criminal Tribunal in Hague. Duchene and Amuka-Bird are the main mediators of this trial, which is otherwise absent on stage. It is on their shoulders that the production is built. For the audience, the only way to relate to the story of Ubu is through their elaborate gesture choreography – the slight changes in their tone of voice, the way their expressions change when they follow with their eyes an invisible figure off the stage. As characters, the interpreters are denied real life and always remain in the shadow of the story. But the subtleness and technical mastery in the acting of Duchene and Amuka-Bird provide us with the only glimpses of real emotions.

Katie Mitchell is consciously driving us an away from the intrigue of courtroom drama and the ‘traps’ of theatrical affection. Instead, the performance mimics an actual trial in the fact that both attempt to indirectly reconstruct a reality, which is in itself long gone. This adds up to the play’s probe into the capability of our legal institutions to respond adequately to the complex cases of crimes against humanity.

Unfortunately, there’s a down side to it all. More than halfway through the performance another two screens slide open, revealing the prison cell of Ubu Roi and a smoking area at the Tribunal. Scenes happen simultaneously in both places, however, something is lost in the direct representation of stage actions. The characters of Ubu, a helpless old man wearing on his face the grotesque paints of his puppet predecessor, and the prosecuting and defence attorneys, engaged in a tirade about the purpose and ethics of their institution, fall flat on their faces, unable to impress.

In Katie Mitchell’s production, telling turns out to be more engaging than showing. Treated with deadly seriousness and hyperreal diligence, the borders between fiction and reality blur, giving the story of Ubu almost mythical proportions. He becomes the face of war crime, a puppet sitting in for people like Mladic, Gbagbo, and Bagosara. The essence of the performance, however, lies not only in the trial itself and the deconstruction of jurisdiction, but more in the absence of conclusion. ‘The Trial of Ubu’ is an 80-minute experience of enacted absence – of consistent characters, of solid reality, of justice, and answers. 

Нещо темата с призраците ме преследва отново. Така де, от онези, миналите, на миналото, които никога не изчезват съвсем. Тази им способност да летят в пространството и през времето ме плаши. Питам се - какво искат, когато идват? Да се радвам ли, че ме помнят с добро, или да се плаша, че изобщо се връщат. Веднъж, когато слизах по стълбите в тъмното, видях човек срещу мен. Помислих го за дявол. Кой казва, че адът не съществува? Той е като рая, ни повече, ни по-малко в душата, ума, сърцето, клетките и прочее биологични и метафизични елементи.

Един призрак ме посети отново в съня ми. Усмихваше се. Когато призраците се усмихват, всичко, което виждам аз, е беззъба зейнала дупка; като черна дупка, която поглъща. Поглъща разума ми, способността да преценявам и да чувствам. Тази черна дупка се получи от най-светлото петно, което някога имах. И точно затова ми подейства още по-силно. Духовете на миналото дори когато идват с усмивка, идват да те завлекат със себе си.

Когато прислужникът му донасяше пощата, той диреше с поглед желания почерк върху някой плик и когато го съзреше, обземаше го неволно вълнение, а сърцето му започваше да бие. Той протягаше ръка и вземаше писмото. Отново поглеждаше адреса, после разкъсваше плика. Какво ли му пише тя? Ще има ли вътре думата “обичам”? Никога тя не беше я написала, никога не беше я произнесла, без да я придружи с думата “много” - “Обичам ви много”, “Обичам ви твърде много”, “Нима не ви обичам?”. Той познаваше добре тези изрази, които не казват нищо с прибавките си “много”, “твърде много”. Може ли да се степенува любовта? Може ли човек да съди дали обича много или малко? Да кажеш, че обичаш много, значи, че обичаш по-малко, отколкото ако кажеш само “обичам те”. Човек обича, и толкова - нищо повече, нищо по-малко. Думата “обичам” не може да се допълва. Нищо повече от тази дума човек не може нито да си въобрази, нито да каже. Тя е кратка, тя е всичко. Тя е тялото, душата, животът, цялото  същество. Човек я чувства като топлината на кръвта, диша я като въздуха, носи я в себе си като мисълта, защото тя става единствената му мисъл. Нищо повече не съществува вън от нея. Това не е дума, а неизмеримо състояние, представено с няколко букви. Каквото и да прави, човек не може да работи, да вижда, да усеща, да вкусва, да чувства така, както преди да се влюби. Мариол беше станал жертва на тази малка дума и погледът му пробягваше по редовете, за да открие любов, подобна на неговата. Той намираше наистина повод в тях да си каже: “Тя ме обича много”, но никога, за да се провикне: “Тя ме обича!” Госпожа дьо Бьорн продължаваше в своите писма хубавия поетичен роман, започнат в Мон Сен-Мишел. Това беше любовна литература, а не любов.

The text has gone. Only the postscript remained.

P.S: The ladder goes only up. If you wish to go down, you have to jump and take the full force of the hit. 

Вече няма текст. Остана само послеписът:

п.п: Стълбата води единствено нагоре. Ако решиш да слезеш, скачаш директно и поемаш цялата сила на удара.

When one of the security guys told me, ’ You can go there. The naked man has appeared’, I didn’t anticipate it a lot. Roger Hiorns’ metal bench was there on a poster to attract my attention for weeks. Even longer, perhaps for months. And when I went to see it, it was there. The bench. Nothing but a sign, ‘Occasionally a flame appears and also a man’. Sort of. So I saw it, and didn’t see it at the same time and my whole curiosity about it disappeared, leaving me to foolishly believe that I can imagine what’s it like to see a bench with a naked guy on it. And a flame. Looking at each other. But you can’t quite imagine it so I went and saw that man sitting and it was - wow. I can’t think of another word but magic. A lecturer once told us that good art changes your behaviour. If that is true, Roger Hiorn’s bench was the best art I saw that Sunday evening. I didn’t want to see the man frontally. If I had, I would have turned him into a simple nude model and look at him as if he were the same sort of object as was the woven pane behind him (a completely different work of art). I am still not sure whether he wasn’t in fact serving that purpose - being a sculpture made of flesh for audiences to impose their fantasies and ideas on. But I definitely didn’t see him that way.

Instead, I took a look from the side. The edges of the flame were hardly visible, like flickering contours of a life standing still and motionless. And then the man’s slow breathing in and out. His chest moving less than an inch, it had the steady pace of a ritual happening over millennia without change. This was all I could see. The man was looking at the flame and the flame was looking at the man and I was thinking that this was like a fable for the Creation of life. He didn’t need any words; he was the pure essence of life. And this made me feel immensely serene and humble.